Controversial Ad System in place

Update #2, September 29: A less-intrusive pop-up ad has been enabled. Also temporary.

Update September 27: The ads have been disabled. This isn’t a future proof solution and the ads are too spammy, even if registrations went up.

Hey guys,Quick heads up! This week we’re trying out a new ad system, a pretty annoying pop-up. It’s temporary as we try and find out what kind of ads our audience is interested in.

To avoid the pop-up:

Either register a membership. Members are 100% free from ads, forever.

Or use an adblocker.

Remember that the test is only temporary. I don’t like the ads either, and I wish there was a way to not do this. But to cover server costs, and more importantly, add new features to the site and pay our mods – We need to generate some income.

I’m listening. If this is too much of a hassle, I’ll shut it down. In the end, you guys are what makes the site and I don’t want to piss you off.

Honestly I assumed the site had been hacked when I saw the “complete an offer to unlock” screen. (I actually have an account but wasn’t logged in at the time).

Why? Because I have a lot of respect and trust for this site that’s been built up over many, many years.

Learning that you deliberately placed this kind of shit (it’s not an ad, it’s much worse) makes me immediately lose the trust I placed in you by creating my account and giving you my email address.

I really can’t overstate the harm that this does to your brand. Everyone needs to make money, but these survey things are an unacceptable barrier to functionality, not to mention the fact that they are normally the stuff of illegal download sites, which you have always been careful to distance yourself from. I’d rather see 100 regular banner ads on a page than this.

Well, if you’ve used the site for a few years – I hope you can bare with me while trying to solve. It sounds like you’ve enjoyed the site for some time.
But your email doesn’t pay the bills. And neither does 100 ads.

And the spammy ads you’re mentioning were enabled for a few hours. All you needed to do was to sign in. You can use a fake email if you need to. Still free.

But you’re going way too far here. This is too harsh imo and your trust and email address doesn’t entitle you to be mad for a free site. Doesn’t excuse the intrusive ads, you’re right about that – but a pop up you can sign in to remove for a few hours – that’s a small price to pay.

I joined I think 3 years ago, and I AM logged in, but still get the annoying pop up to ‘leak site’ – bug or settings my end? Obvs i’ll still keep visiting but hoped if I was logged in I wouldn’t get the ads………..

Some of us don’t care for semi-nsfw pop up ads, regardless of how easy it is to close. If you embed the ads into pages (not popups/popovers), ensure they’re not raunchy/animated/annoying, and add a note requesting users whitelist HIL when blocked, I’m sure a good number of users would gladly allow non-intrusive ads. I love the site, check it daily, I’m fine with tasteful advertising if it means the site gets to succeed.